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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

♫ The times, they are a'changin… ♫

Beginnings of the school year are a fun and memorable time—lots of getting-to-know-yous, hanging out, establishing routines, and so on. It's a time of transition, and a great opportunity to reinvent, both as a student and a teacher

Here at #teachSDA, we're beginning (again) our own year of learning, and we're looking for new ways to better grow our professional learning network (PLN). After a lot of discussion on how to go about that, we've stumbled upon a new method of running our weekly chats, and we're proud to announce it as #teachSDA 2.0—a new and improved version of our weekly chat for Seventh-day Adventist Christian educators worldwide.

#teachSDA's 2013-2014 logo

First, a recap on how we've run chats before: previously, Mondays at 8pm ET, we'd take a topic and, on the 5s (8:05, 8:15, 8:25, 8:35, and 8:45), pose questions connected to the main topic and "homework" article. Within those 10 minutes, chat participants would answer one question and follow up on each others' responses. For the most part, the entire event took place in that 1-hour window (although we always invite you to continue the conversation throughout the day/week).

New year, new logo:#teachSDA's 2014-2015 logo

Now: Starting first thing on Monday morning, we'll post the five questions and invite you to answer them at any point during the day. Whenever it is convenient for you:

answer 1 (or all 5) questions.

check up on what others on the #teachSDA hashtag are saying.

follow up to any of the tweets on the #teachSDA hashtag.

Here's the thing—maybe 8pmET is a good time for you, or maybe you're busy at that time. Maybe Monday morning is the best time to tweet, or maybe just in bits and pieces, throughout the day, in 5-minute chunks. Either way, as the day progresses, we'll retweet and repost the questions, and others will go online and answer them too. Get on a couple of times and see what's going on!

So that's the big #teachSDA 2.0 change—what do you think? Might this help us grow our PLN a bit more, across time zones and continents? Let us know what you think!